1. Field of Invention
This is a method of teaching correct pronunciation of spoken American English to foreign-born people, in which they learn to synchronize their speech to recorded video presentations of speech which is accompanied by printed text, mouth movement characters, and tongue placement guides.
2. Prior Art
As the number of people in America who do not speak fluent English with correct pronunciation grows, efficient instruction of spoken English is more than ever a critical goal. English lessons including vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation have traditionally been delivered via the spoken word, in classroom lectures and recently, in recorded audio media. The use of videotape in language instruction is now gaining credibility as American media become the dominant source of information for people around the world.
With regard to pronunciation instruction, educators in general have assumed that students' speech will improve as they learn to hear and repeat English speech. This listen-and-repeat approach has generally failed to show appreciable results for foreign-born students of English.
English speech consists of a stream of phonemes, each physically generated by a specific combination of lips, teeth, tongue, jaw, and voice. Correct movements of the speech mechanisms, therefore, are the behaviors critical to generating accurate English speech. Visual information about the mechanics of speech sound production are essential for foreign-born people to acquire English pronunciation. Active student participation adds an important kinesthetic component. Video presentation of speech instruction, with real-time feedback about students' performance, is an ideal format that greatly accelerates language learning.
Previous efforts to use visual pronunciation notation systems include Kingma, (U.S. Pat. No. 660,255) Acres, (U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,836) 1980, and Mills, (U.S. Pat. No. 4,460,342) 1984. None of these made use of video technology. Although Kingma, Acres, and Mills do print English text together with drawings of the shapes of the mouth, the present method features mouth position characters, and makes use of video technology a process whereby students hear and see the speech spoken and speak simultaneously along with presentations of the text, graphics, and sound.
The venerable Kingma used neither audio nor video in his method, and expected students to achieve speech accuracy primarily by following drawings. Acres' invention was intended for rehabilitation of articulation disabilities. Acres used 15 sketches of the human face and mouth with 10 additional instructional signs. That method introduced a mirror with overlaid sketches of the mouth for the patient to look at, but no sounds are spoken simultaneously with any models. That method was complex, required numerous sketches of a human face with mouth shapes and additional instructional signs. The mouth symbols were not named. They did not appear closely related to the letters that symbolize the associated sounds, nor to the actual appearance of the mouth when forming the sounds. The complex notations consumed a large space, were not easily printable, and are not currently in widespread use.
Mills invention was also designed for speech rehabilitation. Mills used a system of time intervals which aimed to represent the generation of speech sounds over time. Mills used several static sketches to represent the lips and tongue, purportedly in a continuum of movement similar to the frames of a film. These various sketches were not named, indistinct and difficult to distinguish one from another. These sketches were presented at times with audio, but did not provide that the student respond with simultaneous speech. English letters were printed in a variety of non-standard spelling conventions, which made the text difficult to decode. Like Acres, these notations covered a large space, were not easily printable, and are not currently in widespread use.
None of the known prior art has the major advantages of our speech training method, namely: a) the use of video; b) use of printable characters symbolizing mouth positions appearing close to corresponding English text; c) use of voice synchronization to accelerate learning by allowing students to employ their senses of sight and sound, simultaneously, to acquire and fine-tune English speech.